My husband is the chef in our family. He doesn’t cook for a living anymore but he is the main cook in our house, Lucky us!! I say this because as it got closer to time for Addison to start on solids, I knew I wanted to try and make her food. Knowing what is in her food is very important to us as we want to keep it as clean as possible. I never really knew how to eat healthy and certainly didn’t know how to cook healthy. That, I learned way later in life after battling my weight for years, so I knew I wanted to introduce Addison to healthy foods right away as well as all different varieties of foods as she grows older. It’s so neat to help create your kids pallet for food! Her likes and dislikes are formed by what we feed her as well as giving her all the good nutrients her body needs. This is exciting, but for some reason, it also gave me anxiety as well. I’ve learned from other moms that sometimes it doesn’t matter, at some point, all they will want is chicken nuggets and macaroni so I’m prepared for that too! In the meantime I’m going to try and give her all the good stuff.
When we planted our garden we really didn’t do it with Addison’s food in mind, but things actually timed out rather well even though we can’t take credit for the perfect timing. When we realized we could use a lot of our vegetables for our food, that finalized our decision to make her food as well. Addison hasn’t quite got the Baby Led Weaning way of eating down and because of that and my peace of mind we decided we would with purées to start. Then the next concern was time. With us both working, would we actually have time to keep up with this and to my surprise it really hasn’t been so bad. I prep her food about every two weeks. They do make several baby specific blender/steamer cookers which have great reviews but we were in need of a new blender so we went with the Vitamix and decided to try it on for size. I also loved using the trays from Wee Sprouts for freezing. They’re so easy to use and stack and take up less space in the freezer than the individual ones that stack poorly. After doing a lot of reading, I learned that in order to find possible allergens to food it’s best to start introducing fruits and vegetables one at a time. We started with the basics: avocado, banana and so on and after eliminating them then the fun started and we could get creative. Here are a few of ours and Addison’s favorite recipes we’ve made so far!
Kiwi, Apple + Zucchini
3 Zucchini peeled and sliced (if you are using a Vitamix no need to peel)
2 Apples peeled and cored, chopped
3 Kiwis peeled and chopped
Zucchini and apples steamed 8-10 minutes
Add kiwi to the steamed apples and zucchini in Vitamix or food processor and purée to desired consistency or stage for baby. This recipe yields a lot so it is a great one to freeze
Green Beans, Carrots + Ginger
1 Cup Green Beans
4 Carrots peeled
Grated ginger to tasteGreen Beans and carrots steam 8-10 minutes
Add Ginger to Vitamix/Food Processor and purée to desired consistency
Acorn Squash + green beansAcorn Squash halved and baked for 25 minutes at 350 degrees
1 Cup Green Beans steamed Remove skin from Acorn squash and add green beans to food processor/Vitamix purée to desired consistency. I like to salt and pepper or add a little ginger to taste for flavor.
Banana and Avocado is always a favorite as well!
All recipes I add water or formula as needed to blend fruits and vegetables. After Purées are ready I pour them to the handy fill line in the Wee Sprouts trays and freeze.
Thanks for visiting our blog!
Kiwi Apple + Zucchini
Adventures with Addison 